Mass shooters-absent fathers link ignored by anti-gun activists

Gun-control activists are quick to blame mass shootings on the proliferation of firearms, but are less likely to point to the proliferation of fatherless households.

Yet research shows that school shooters tend to come from broken homes, where one or more parent is absent, addicted or abusive.

Warren Farrell, co-author of the just-released “The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It,” said the frequency at which fathers are absent has been devastating for the development of boys. He pointed to research showing that boys without fathers fare worse than boys with fathers on more than 70 different metrics.

“They’re much more likely to drink, much more likely to do drugs, much more likely to be depressed, much more likely to be suicidal, much more likely to be violent, much more likely to be in prison,” Mr. Farrell said. “And they’re also much more likely to commit mass shootings.”

Mr. Farrell is the author of several books about male and female behavior. He’s the chair of the Commission to Create a White House Counsel on Boys and Men, and in June he will talk to the U.S. Department of Education about a program to increase the number of male teachers in early education.

In “The Boy Crisis,” co-authored with John Gray, Mr. Farrell turned his attention to why boys are falling behind girls educationally, socially and in terms of mental health.

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The book was published weeks after the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed, and comes amid an acrimonious national conversation about how to prevent similar massacres from occurring.

Mr. Ferrell said a boy who grows up without a father is rarely given sufficient boundary enforcement from a young age. This leads to the inability to postpone gratification and do well in school and athletics compared to other boys, which in turn causes him to resent his peers and authority figures.

These feelings are only exacerbated as he enters adolescence and girls reject him, causing him to retreat into video games and pornography.

“You can imagine how the fantasy of being able to shoot all these people who have rejected him is appealing,” Mr. Ferrell said. “Being for once in his life recognized and talked about all over the world by people wondering about his motivations.”

Mr. Ferrell said social, economic and technological changes have also made it more difficult for boys to find purpose in life. He said boys in the old days found purpose in becoming “disposable,” either in war or in the workplace.

“Today, there’s a purpose void, because you don’t need as many boys in war, and both girls and boys share the potential for being breadwinners,” he said. “When that purpose void combines with fatherlessness, boys don’t have a way of being guided to a more nuanced sense of purpose.”

“The Boy Crisis” builds on a body of research documenting the connection between broken homes and school shootings.

Peter Langman, an expert on the psychology of school shooters, compiled data that showed the vast majority came from households characterized by divorce and separation, abuse and neglect, alcoholism and drug addiction.

“Out of this sample of 56 school shooters, only 10 (18%) grew up in a stable home with both biological parents,” Mr. Langman wrote in a 2016 article. “In other words, 82% of the sample either grew up in dysfunctional families or without their parents together (for at least part of their lives).”

Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland, Florida, shooter, fits the profile. He was given up for adoption at birth, and his adoptive father suffered a fatal heart attack when he was just five years old. Just a few months before the shooting, his adoptive mother died of pneumonia.

One of the ways fatherlessness manifests itself in America is in the form of mass shootings, Mr. Ferrell said, because guns are comparatively easy to access in the United States than in the rest of the developed world.

But the symptoms of the boy crisis present themselves in different nations in different ways.

Studies of imprisoned ISIS recruits, for instance, have shown that they were often deprived of fathers or otherwise grew up in broken homes. The terrorist organization gives boys, especially fatherless ones, what they were unable to find elsewhere: the ability to sacrifice themselves for a supposedly higher cause.

“ISIS fills many of the parameters sought by boys without dads: purpose, excitement, and identity,” a passage from “The Boy Crisis” reads. “For some, religion may represent but one more authority to distrust. But for others, religion offers a structure that strengthens their sense of purpose and mission.”

Mr. Ferrell said prudent gun regulations may help to reduce the number of mass shootings. But he said focusing solely on guns misses the larger, more complex picture about what is happening.

“There is the ability to buy these guns,” he said. “But guns are not the underlying problem; they are the magnifier.”

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The break down of the family a is direct contributor to today’s culture of death.

“I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is ‘Abortion’, because it is a war against the child… A direct killing of the innocent child, ‘Murder’ by the mother herself… And if we can accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?” ― Mother Teresa

As the percentage of one parent homes increased so did the criminal activity but fatherless boys lost a lot more then just one parent. The strength of a father combined with the love of them both towards their children is what made America great and the lack of such is what is tearing it down. The blame goes totally to the Democratic party with the blame going to Johnson’s great society mostly that did nothing but reward women for having fatherless babies. Until this program along with a lot of other welfare programs are stopped this country is going to continue to decline.

Think on this one,,,,Mass murdering father absent collectives of mayhem killers are also a reflection of the Snowflake fatherless raised Democrat created failed social experiment killers of our American Constitution and ability to Self-govern. The only difference is that the pain of the fatherless mass murderers becomes so great that they commit suicide by cop to end their pain, while the snowflakes kill America in government Dependency where government and dependency becomes their cop instead of their ability for self-discipline and Self-governance, having first killed GOD the ultimate father figure of accountability, then socially castrating the earthly father in strength debilitating laws where a disciplining loving father now faces jail if he spanks his own child in youth so that he won’t have to shoot him in corrupted undisciplined adulthood. Can we just stop the mindless social experiments and live by proven laws of God and nature?

Get rid of the perpetual welfare system, except for disabled people. Two to three years lifetime welfare and that is it. Any man that gets a girl / woman pregnant, if he is working, has his wages garnished, to support the child. If the father is on welfare, cut out his welfare. If a woman is on welfare and then has a second baby out of wedlock, cut out her welfare. All of this social science and psychology put into government, has destroyed society!

Why ‘keep it’ for disabled folk? Isn’t the whole purpose of the Americans with Disabilities Act, so the disabled CAN WORK and not get discriminated against??
WHY HAVE IT, to protect disabled folk who work, if they don’t work and just stay on welfare?

BUT i fully agree with the rest of what you said.. STOP THIS whole generational welfare bupkis.

I am still waiting to here which psychotropic drug was prescribed to this miscreant and which 1st person shooter video game he was fixated upon. In my experience, the common denominator for these mass shootings is prescribed psychotropic drugs! The liberal prescribing of these drugs to make the parent or teacher’s job easier is bordering upon gross negligence. In this case we have demoncrat liberal school officials running a scam in criminal reporting in order to gain control over more federal funding for the school system. And the guy is from Chicago the home of our former President. The Sheriff is shown in a photo op with Hillary Clinton. Is there far more to this sham than meets the eye? Their finger prints are all over this Sherriff and School System. Remember both are acolytes of Saul Alinsky and also possibly the School Superintendent. Something to think about?

As the numbers of broken homes rises, an astonishing thing occurs; incidences of crimes by the offspring of “single parent families”, has risen at an equal, but disparaging rate/percentage. I could name a great number of factors that give rise to the derivation of this, but none so great or persuasive and pervasive as the proliferation of the demise of moral character so adamantly needed in the home and public- quite disturbingly, associated closely with the absence of moral leadership and demands for responsibility growing up- Instead, our youth are left on their own to learn the “facts of life” from TV, APPs and sordid communication entities such as Facebook and Twitter. Case studies prove beyond doubt that for every 40 hours a child spends on social media, a grade point drop in school studies occurs. Maybe a suspension of these allowances could bring about a better social order and understanding through a teaching of the responsibilities that are needed in life. This goes for the parents, also, since they are the only “role models” kids have that are predominately in their lives on a daily basis.

In general, men are not as equipped as women for the role of nurturing young children, so will not be motivated to get custody and will work hard to keep her

Since the role of the father is to provide and protect and a mother getting custody knows she can sleep with other men but keep him on the hook to provide, has a motive to leave the marriage. Remove that motive and she will work harder so he does not divorce her

When one thinks of the great benefits to father custody one wonders why we don’t have it.

The answer is simple, we don’t have it because we value other things more than the welfare of the next generation

And all one has to do is listen to who is making the arguments against it to see what and who is it we value more than children

Children need two parents. They need one of each gender, not just a father or just a mother, but both. Despite what the secular world would have you believe the genders are different. They bring different things to a marriage and different influences to a growing child.

Like so many things wrong in the world today, the lack of two parents traces back to the lack of God in so many lives.

The secular world teaches both genders to do whatever feels good and do it as soon as they want to. The Christian world teaches responsibility, to wait, to get prepared, to get married, to be ready to raise children before having them and then to do so only in marriage. It teaches that it’s necessary to honor one another and to work out your problems, not to run to divorce court at the first sign of a problem.

Of all women and men in jails and prisons today, over 70% of them have something in common and it is not their ethnicity or skin color, it is not their hair, and it is not which side of the track they grew up in…it is that they did not have their fathers at home when they were growing up. Over 70% of convicted bank robbers, murderers, rapists, drug pushers, muggers, et al grew up without their father or a strong male influence in their lives. Even sociologists and other social scientists have noted this huge statistic. Change that factor and change lives.

It’s not just boys who are affected by the lack of their father’s presence. Girls also need their fathers. Girls may feel the necessity to have a man in their lives. If they don’t have a man all the time they feel worthless. They often get into abusive relationships